Pride and Humility

The two aren’t inherent opposites and like many traits, should ideally coexist.

The risk of too little humility is myopic arrogance, whereas too much can lead to the unwarranted inferiorizing of oneself.

You can imagine pride and humility as two subsegments of a spectrum, with the sweet spot in the overlapping middle—true understanding of self-worth.

But why does it matter? Why should I care about how proud or humble I am? What difference does it make to me, or anyone else?

Ultimately pride and humility are related to your self-worth, and your own perception of it.

As an emerging adult, I’ve found myself constantly needing to redefine my self-worth. As a woman, as a young person, working most of my waking hours in corporate america, I had believed the best cushion you can create around yourself is an inflated sense of self. As a person of morals, this feels wrong and exhausting. I asked myself the same questions I asked you just a few seconds ago.

There are two lenses through which we can look to better understand pride and humility - one that serves the society we live in and one that serves us as individuals.

I think as a person of morals, I hope to create a better world and look to be a better person.

Pride is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “reasonable self-esteem,” but in the Oxford dictionary as “the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance.” This seems like a pretty strong difference in connotation.

Pride as an emotion, and to feel pride, is undoubtedly an act of the ego. We relish in our own capability and merit. But the feeling that swells in your chest is not all a bad thing.

Where society(ies) begins to judge pride is when it starts to stretch towards increasingly individualistic tendencies, until we end up at narcissism. Narcissism, excess pride, pride misplaced, pride imposed -- however you want to think about it, actually poses risk to our social cohesion.

Written out on paper that makes perfect logical sense —as we pass certain thresholds in individualism, the less socially cohesive we are.

The relationship between us and our society is deeply symbiotic — we contribute and participate in society to push it forward, and likewise, as society moves forward, we benefit and are fulfilled by our relationships.

As those ties of social cohesion are broken, the potential benefits become increasingly limited.

Somewhat in an ironic vein, arguments can be made that capitalism (and consequently consumerism) fuel the fire of what psychologists have been calling the “narcissism epidemic” (Twenge, Campbell). And those arguments wouldn’t be wrong.

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Even popular culture preserves and propagates unhealthy individualistic tendencies. Let’s take a look at the popular phrase “gaslight, girlboss, gatekeep”. The 3 G’s of getting ahead. Gaslight and gatekeep in particular are embedded with irony, actions we know are immoral as they manipulate and withhold, but exist nonetheless. Double clicking on gatekeep: “the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.”

Why do people gatekeep? The answer I’ve usually heard is to preserve the way things (music, art, restaurants, etc.) currently are; if it gains popularity, the quality could go down or prices could go up. And sure, that may be an honest reason and those concerns are valid. But there is another answer to why we gatekeep that we may not openly admit.

Having this thing be our own, whatever it is, makes it special and also makes us feel special. Specialness, uniqueness, separation are nothing new anywhere in the world. Socioeconomic class divides have separated us for millennia in caste systems, feudal systems, and systems of discrimination. But this is almost a micro disparity, serving the purpose of exclusion.

fragile future exhibit at the shed from 2021; this exhibit of drifting blocks reminded me of the delicate and fluid connections humans have to one another

My point here is not to argue against individuality. I am not saying that individuality is the antithesis to social cohesion. I present instead the risk of being overly individualistic, edging on narcissism, and disconnecting oneself from the society in which we exist. In overly preserving the self, we create hairline fractures in our relations to those around us and limit the potential benefit of our networks.

I, too, more than many, am guilty of gatekeeping. But I ask myself, and you, to consider the following: so what happens if that corner restaurant you love is shared amongst many? Yes, it will become more crowded. Prices may go up because of the high demand. But the money they’ve earned is deserved, no? The quality (ideally) justifies the popularity. And there will always be something new to discover. Places, people, objects aren’t intended to be ours forever. Yet, we wish they were.

On a more personal level, pride misplaced will lead to diminishing returns in our own fulfillment. Evolutionarily, we cannot be entirely fulfilled and happy when we disconnect ourselves from the context in which we exist and the relationships in which we partake.

Many psychologists have noted the ways narcissism and individualism have plagued our society through the early 2000s. But recently there has been a rise of interest in humility.

Humility, when done well, is ultimately being transparent with yourself about who you are and accepting that truth. It is self awareness and clarity. The upside to being humble is that honesty can set you up for true growth and betterment. Our humility is directly linked to our ability and willingness to learn.

So why not be humble? Well it can be tough to swallow that hard truth, and you may also be risking your social image by showing weakness in an environment where it may not be safe for you to be vulnerable. There are many valid reasons people may choose against humility.

But the way we perceive humility can vary heavily based on the environments we are familiar with. Christian humility, for example, has historically been associated with renouncement of parts of yourself, shame, and sin (this may not be palatable for everyone). Not that we live in a socratic society, but Socrates did consider humility in wisdom to be knowing what we don’t know and looking to address our blind spots.

The perception of humility I have found most interesting is in Confucianism. Confucian philosophy placed heavier emphasis on humility as a pillar for social cohesion. Confucian humility is grounded in the consistent valuing of social good over the satisfaction we get from our individual aspirations.

It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg situation it appears. It is easier to be humble in a society that values and rewards humility, but we are also the constituents of said society and are responsible for making that reality true. We cannot wait around for the ideal circumstances to be better and more connected to others.

Looking more deeply through the lens of the individual, the grappling with humility is a matter of the ego and its assertion. As we’ve already explored, humility is not just being modest about your traits. I’ve begun to think of true humility as the act of letting go of control. To prevent the ego from overtaking our perception of the world around us and our role in it, perhaps to be humble is to take a step back and let go of attachment/desire to impose/be. Instead we step back and we observe, be curious and attentive to see what is true.

When we take that step back, we are not dismissing our emotions or understanding. We carry it in one arm to look back at once we’ve listened.

I’ll be a broken record here and go back to my earlier statement: pride and humility are not inherent opposites. Their coexistence is the overlapping portion in our spectrum:

Ultimately what we do not want to lose is the good that is true. And when we detach ourselves from the desires of our ego, which I find tends to whine like an unpleasable beast, we do not need to. When we face ourselves with honesty, what is good and true will remain good and true.

In the time that I’ve been away from work this recent winter holiday, I’ve found myself in the wraps of nihilism and existentialism. Not in a ‘I don’t know what to do with myself now’ way but more of a ‘my head is above water and I don’t know what I’ve been doing’ way.

I thought life (and specifically corporate america) are about the conscious world and the domination of the ego. You must inflate your ego and show up with a balloon-head in the room (full of other balloon-heads) for everyone to see you. But must I be so tired all the time? Is this all there is? Puffing up my chest and parading myself around? Is this really the right way?

I am fairly early into my career, a few years under the belt but still a lot ahead. For myself, I wonder if I have completely mis-navigated our spectrum. In fact I know I have. I fear I have unjustly wound myself into pride, but not pride for the right things. It is tough after going through systems of accolades and quantifiable success to then think of how to accept and internalize credit for what feels largely subjective unless it is a complete failure.

I think this, in its own way, is also overly individualistic as you’re never taking that step back to see what really is. It’s almost a sadistic individualism, unable to help oneself from wallowing in self-grievance.

The practice of detachment and observance is a bit of an experiment with a learning curve. We (I) are so used to mulling over our identities in relations to others and our individual pursuits. We become entrenched in our own narratives of ourselves instead of being and letting be. I’ve only recently become aware that nihilism and existentialism are so close to the thoughts that feel meaningless as they circle my mind every moment of every day. It feels rather timely that this is where I find myself in the wake of a new year (an arbitrary yet useful delineation in the passage of time).